It is common for a motor be used to drive a shaft, which transfers torque from the motor to be used as mechanical energy for driving a pump, ship propeller or any number of other applications. In some cases, the torque must be carried over long distances that exceed the length of a single shaft attached to the motor and one or more additional shafts are required to connect the motor to the ultimate device to which the mechanical energy is being transferred.
Mechanical wear of a pump or other mechanical device can in some cases be lessened when the shaft is properly aligned with the device's bearings. In horizontal arrangements, this often can be achieved through the use of flexible couplings. In vertical applications, however, flexible couplings cannot be used because current flexible couplings are unable to support the weight of the pump or other device at the end of the shaft and rigid couplings are used instead.
Although rigid couplings are better able to support the weight of a vertically positioned pump and its associated shaft(s), such couplings are less able to respond to situations in which adjustments in the alignment between the motor shaft and the device shaft are needed. Current solutions generally involve a trial and error approach of making incremental permanent deformations of the rigid couplings to achieve proper alignment. However, this approach also requires that the coupling assembly be disassembled, modified, reassembled and then analyzed to determine whether the adjustment sufficiently resolved the alignment problem. These efforts can be laborious and time consuming, particularly in down-well applications in which the pump or other device at the bottom of the well, along with any additional shaft extension segments, must be pulled from the well and subsequently dropped back down as part of each adjustment.
These and other drawbacks are associated with coupling two shafts for the transfer of torque.
What is needed is a clamp assembly that can be used to couple two shafts for the transfer of torque that allows angular adjustments to more easily be made after the clamp assembly has been installed.